Who Knew? The Running Boom Re-Booms.

Once upon a time there was a running boom. It began when Frank Shorter won the Olympic marathon in 1972 and took off from there. It seemed everyone was out on the streets. Even now chubby newspaper columnists were running a 26.2 mile marathons.

(This blog completed the marathons at Boston, New York, San Francisco, Avenue of the Giants, and Pikes Peak twice. And there was really no excuse for doing Pikes Peak twice. Once was plenty.)

New York Times

Someone forgot to tell these runners that the running boom is over.

But then we got older, chubbier, and less motivated. Too bad about the running boom going bust.

Except for one tiny detail. That never really happened. Quietly, and with a lack of notice in the media that doesn’t say much for our news judgment, the running craze has blown up again. On Oct. 22, of this year, 15,000 women participated in the Nike Marathon in San Francisco, the third straight year that it has filled its 15,000-spot roster.

But what really caught my attention was last Sunday’s New York Marathon. At lot of the publicity went to cycling superstar Lance Armstrong, who finished in just under three hours (and we do mean “just” under. His time was 3:59.36, but that’s still better than the “Puffy Combs standard of 4:14.54.)

But the really remarkable story was that behind Armstrong and the elite runners were another 36,000 participants. And if you think that’s an impressive number, you need to know something else. This year organizers received an amazing 93,000 applications. Perhaps reports of the demise of the running boom were premature.

In fact, marathonguide.com says there were 382,000 marathon finishers in 2005, and that’s up nearly 100,000 from 2000.

What’s fueling this? We can answer in a single word — women.

Last year roughly 153,000 women finished marathons, according to marathonguide.com. That’s an increase of over a third from the previous year. As this story in Newsday says, women realized that, with a little effort, running a marathon was an attainable goal.

That’s a change from the old running boom, when a marathon was seen as a grueling challenge for elite runners, most of whom were male. Thirty years ago, the story says, the New York Marathon field was 2,090 and just 88 of them were women.

The other component is the introduction of charity. Almost all of the races now make a point of including a charitable aspect. The San Francisco marathon, for example, has now raised some $40 million in three years.

Rather than competing ferociously, women often train and run in groups, and emphasize the camaraderie of the experience. They sometimes plan their race as a getaway vacation.

Race organizers, no dummies, are working the demographic. New York was one of the first to make the race an event, with bands and entertainment en route. The San Francisco race hands out chocolate when the runners pass Ghiradelli Square and even offer a free pedicure along the way.

The interesting thing is that if you look at the media accounts of the races, there is still a huge focus on the winners and very little on the thousands of other runners who completed the 26-mile course. That’s funny because the new breed of marathon runners appears to have almost no interest in the winners, as they focus on their own personal experience.

As the Newsday story says, if you asked most of the New York finishers who won, they’d probably say, “Oh, I think it was a Kenyan.”